August 22, 2008

so here is the first little upgrade on my unfinished Tzeentch-Soulgrinder. Starting with the boring part : the legs. Not much of special interest here. I mainly used Boltgun Metal with Brazen Brass for the legs, while the body is drybrushed with Boltgun Metal and Codex Grey. What still needs to be done is some further darkening down the boltgun metal (still a little to shiny) and I still have no idea for the leg armor plates on the last pairs. First idea was some Tzeentch-Symbol... but due to the ultimate lack of any freehand painting skill I´m still stuck with black plates. As I said otherwise there is not much special here...

Now the more interesting upper part: Here you have the very detailed and organic part of the Grinder. Starting with thin layer of Mordian blue I painted the whole skinny partof the model. Next another thin layer of Space Wolves Grey + Mordian Blue was added. At last pure Space Wolves Grey was used as on the GW studio model. To give it a tzeentchy blue-purple look I now first washed the model with Asurmen Blue and after drying with Baal Red. As you can see this lead to some nice blending effects with wich I´m really pleased. I also started with the details on the model but this is still almost 99% work in progress.

You just have to love this model .... I really think this is one of the best GW has ever done ....

August 21, 2008

With the new Codex: Space Marines lurking behind the next corner, I decided to start painting a new Land Raider for my Marines. Obviously.Alright, that's the best moment to start a little WIP report and I try to capture the most steps with my camera. I will give a few explanations on which colours I use, which technique and so on.So let's dive right into it.After I cleaned everything up, primed all interior parts and painted said interior, I assembled most of the tank. Sadly I didn't make pictures of the inside. But as I think no one will take a too good look into the tank, this is only done superficially. I painted it with a dark grey, darker than cold grey (Vallejo Game Color), then drybrushed it with a lighter tone of grey and painted the screens of the monitors and cogitators with mostly red and blue (scab red from vallejo with parts in blood red from GW, enchanted blue with parts in ice blue, both GW). The mechanical parts in the back I simply drybrushed with boltgun metal and brazen brass (sadly GW took that color out of the program, I don't know why, but that color was great)

Ok, now to the parts you can actually see. The first thing I did was painting the tracks with boltgun metal. After that I used my ink mix of chaos black with a huge portion of water and the Vallejo Color Thinner. I think that comes next to the new washes from GW.The next step was cleaning up the mess I did with the boltgun metal, so I overpainted the parts I wanted black with, you can imagine, chaos black.After that I drybrushed the whole tank with a mix of chaos black and cold grey. That's the colour mix I use for all accents on my marines.I drybrushed it again with bestial brown, but only on the lower parts. Followed by another drybrushing step with snakebite leather. But beware this colour is very bright and so I just used it on a few parts and only a little bit.Last step was drybrushing with cold grey for a more dusty look and to soften up the brown.

The picture shows everything very bright but in reality it is a bit darker. But I wanted the impression of a tank rolling through a war torn environment, through ruined cities and the like and I guess there is a lot of dust and dirt...A few sprinkles of boltgun metal for little damages and I think I am done with the first round of wheathering for now.

Next I am going to paint the doors. I am still undecided whether to paint it in NMM style or not. At the moment I am tending to metallics.Ok that's it for this time.To be continued soon.

August 19, 2008

Just a little update from my Tau. The second Devilfish for my slowly expanding Tau army just left the production halls...ahem my painting table.More (and nicer) pics are due to follow when I am done with the passengers. Just two to go.That's it. Hope they see some action soon.

August 12, 2008

anyone ever noticed the small company Micro Art Studios ? They are making gorgeous resin bases for Warhammer and Warhammer 40k.

www.microartstudio.com/en/

With my shiny new Avatar en route, I decieded to base him on one of their temple line.

As you can see the two 60mm temple bases are really detailled and one of them will make a great addition to the big Forgeworld model. I also added two 40mm skull bases. One of them will serve as base for the humble skulltaker while the other one may serve as a Khorne demon prince resting place. With this shipment I also ordered some ruined building bases for Managarm. Check them out :

Here you can see the really nice wanna be terminator 40mm bases. Six of them were in the order and none of them looks like another. I think this is quite remarking as other bought bases quickly work against the uniquness of the models.

The detail on the big 60mm base is also remarkable and will make great ground for a dreadnought.

I wanted to give a short preview of those things to come in near future. Trotzki and I ordered a few things from Forge World to "embellish" our armies.This stuff is really really awesome and even with the neat price it is worth the money. Especially with the strong Euro at the moment :-) it is more affordable.So here we go:The Eldar Avatar of Kaela Mensha Khaine.Absolutely amazing! As you can imagine, definitely no comparison to the GW model. This guy is an appropriate representation of his rules! The wip firewarrior is for size comparison...

As promised some time ago the FW pimped Terminators are going to hit my shelf and hopefully the battlefield. And with the rumoured new rules for storm shields that´s going to be a viable unit. Let´s see if I can do it this year. But that´s definitely getting a WIP paint log! The shields are really great and finely detailled and in addition with the shoulder pads I am looking forward to painting this terminator assault squad.

And last but not least two sets of Land Raider doors. As I am planning to paint at least two more Land Raiders I thought it would be great to get those nice doors to make them look even better. At the moment I am planning doing a Land Raider after I completed my first chunk of the Tau army. Maybe I will make a paint log as well.

August 6, 2008

A little update on my painted models. This week I finished my 3 Screamers of Tzeentch or as many people call them "Flying Meltabombs". I was a little disappointed with the lack of detail on the models so I tried some new techniques with blending colours into each other. It may not be perfect but I´m pleased with the outcome. Gamewise I´m still not really convinced of their usefulness. They may cost not much but killing 3 T4 models isn´t that much of a task. I really think they can bring down any slow moving tank with one warp powered bite, but getting them near the tank will prove complicated. In the only 5th Ed. testgame I had until now (vs. Eldar) they really had problems catching Serpents and even if they managed they where outmanouvered (cursed 6s to hit).

Screamers of TzeentchWarpborne Tankwreckers

With my Screamers finished I now feel free to start the "big guy" of any well organized chaos demon army. My sweet little soul grinder is ready to be started and after 2 hours of cleaning the parts up, I started to glue together the first bits. You really have to be impressed with the size of this thing.... poor little guardian... The upper body won´t be glued to the legs, because the modles parts fit really well (shiny new GW models) and it will be easy to take the body up and leave the legs as wrecked Soul Grinder. More pics while I´m painting ....